


We're not your type of strangers

by gustin_puckerman



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 01:02:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3590406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gustin_puckerman/pseuds/gustin_puckerman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Natasha and Bucky are <em>not</em> cheesy rom-com plotlines where they keep exchanging notes with each other but it also kind of feel like it is. ―Natasha/Bucky. Post-CATWS. For #Buckynat Week Prompt Meme 2014 on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're not your type of strangers

**Author's Note:**

> I've posted this on Tumblr. Might edit it later when I have the time.

Tracking a ghost is hard.

Natasha should know. She’s tried it once, remember? But then again that was 2009 and Steve Rogers was yet to discover and the Winter Soldier was a myth and there was no James “Bucky” Barnes―there was just a bullet wound, a shiny new scar. But it’s not 2009 anymore.

And she’s got Steve. And she’s got, she thinks, a _friend_. And you’d search a ghost for a friend. (Right?) Except she’s never really expect to find him, but she’s there somewhere in Canada (can you believe it? Of all places? _Canada_.) and it’s drizzling a bit but she’s got a new pair of warm boots that she bought with _her own_ _money_ (that Maria helped transit out before the government takes everything out of SHIELD) and he’s there. Like actually _there_.

Just sitting there, right now, just across the street, kind of staring at his coffee or tea or whatever that he buys but never drinks; looking rugged and lost in a worn cap and hoodie (that he _never_ looks comfortable in) with a glove that’s a little too big for his metal fingers.

She makes it obvious. She wants him to _know_ that she’s there. And of course he does. But he’s good at playing pretence. _Excellent_ at it, actually. But she’s not bad. 

And so they act like he’s never tried to kill her like, _thrice_ before, and she acts like he’s not some wanted man that over twenty Intelligent Agencies around the world are looking for.

It works out well for a while.

Until one day he leaves a bright neon pink post-it notes in front of her motel door with a scratchy strings of alphabets strewn together to form sentences that makes Pepper’s handwritings look like… well, like Barton’s handwritings. Yeah. He’s _that_ good.

What can she say. She’s impressed.

The note says:

 _Go away_.

Which was, of course, _charming_. (Sarcasm.) And he knows it’s from him because she could see there are scratches of what she thinks are his attempt to spell out his own name but it just ends up as repeated _B’s_ and _J’s_ and _Soldier_ being crossed off and cancelled like he hasn’t gotten a hold of it yet who he really was, or is. 

Natasha kind of gets it. So she guesses it’s okay. 

And so she goes over to the gas station and picks up the best working pen there is and _doesn’t_ buy a post-it note (she’s a rebel like that) and writes back under the marking of his not-name with a:

 _ **You should get a haircut**_.

Because she can and she will, and she _is_ , and when she knows he’s somewhere roaming around the streets looking into restaurants and figuring out if _pizza_ was truly edible, she goes to his motel and stuck the post-it note against his door. She doesn’t come in, doesn’t try the lock to sneak in. Just paste it and walks away.

And that’s how it starts.

The next day, she gets:

 _Stop following me_.

In a new neon-pink post-it’s that makes her kinda smirk and feel all tingly inside even though she probably shouldn’t. (It’s supposed to be weird, right? It should be. And it is. Kind of. It’s already a strange world as it is―so these little should-be odd things just passes her sometimes.) She probably should go and make contact with Hill to make contact with _Steve_ to tell the big dumb-o old man that she’s got his best friend and he’s actually staying put so they could probably have a really awkward reunion or whatever.

But she doesn’t make any of that necessary move.

Instead, she shakes the pen that she shoves in one of the leather jacket she brought along and writes out:

**_Who says I’m following you ?_ **

She imagines his face, imagines his frustration reading over the note when she pastes it against his door. They both know she _is_ following him, but oh well.

A new post-it note tapes up at the same place the next morning.

 _Are you not?_ It says.

 _ **What do you think?**_ She replies later.

 _I think you’re a liar_. Ouch. Harsh. She winces when she reads over, glaring at it a little like it’s done her wrong. (And to think of it, what he says is not incorrect. She _is_ lying. So she doesn’t know why she’s all squirmy that he’s calling it out so bluntly even without speaking to her directly.)

 _ **I can help you, you know**_. Comes her respond after three cups of tea. (She doesn’t drink coffee. Oh no. That’s all Maria’s expertise. Dunking coffee like breathing in oxygen. It’s crazy.)

She thinks she could read over his hesitation in his next reply.

_How?_

_**Well, first of all, we need to get rid of that hideous clothing you’re currently wearing. We don’t actually buy things at thrift shops, Stranger. How about you try this for a size?** _

(Her writings got long so she’s got to write it at the back right under the sticky part of the note to fit everything and she hates that and she blames him although she knows she could just go out right now and buy a new set of post-it notes but _she’s not going to_.)

She buys him a button down. And there’s a jacket.

He wears the jacket first.

And she smiles when she spots the button down a few days later right when they pass each other at the pedestrians pretending like they haven’t been passing notes like some weird rom-com plotline.

 _ **We should get you a new glove**_.

_What’s wrong with the one I’ve got?_

_**Don’t bullshit me, Romeo. You hate it**_.

She slips him some money the day after.

He gets himself like, two new gloves. (It’s not what she’d _recommend_ , but it’s better than what he used to wear.) And, she thinks, a _coke_. She tells him:

 _ **Just give it a try, Stranger. It won’t kill you**_. (About those drinks.)

 _Too sweet_. 

He burns the bottle of coke. She burns his old glove for him. (He drops it off along with a new note.)

And this goes on for a while. Maybe a month. Maybe just a bit more. Some days the note comes out late. Some, so early, she wonders if he sleeps at all. He writes once:

 _It’s amazing how you manage to fit an essay in a used note_.

 _ **Shut up. I’m not buying post-it’s just cause you’re afraid of cell phones**_.

 _I’m not afraid of them_.

(She draws him a sad smiley face. He hates that. Thinks it’s ridiculous.)

 _Stop. Please_.

She draws him more sad smiley faces.

He doesn’t write to her in three days.

So she buys him lots and lots of mineral water bottles. Three boxes full of it stacked in front of the door of his motel room. The only thing she thinks he drinks. She thinks he accepts it as her form of an apology because he resumes:

_So much. How?_

_**Resources, babe. And trust me, they’re not that expensive even though they seem like they are. Welcome to the 21st Century, Grandpa**_.

 _Yeah, everything’s different_.

_**I guess. You okay though?** _

She could imagine him sighing. _I’m trying to be_.

And then of course she’s got to ruin the whole thing when she goes on ahead and writes:

_**James?** _

And you could tell it’s serious because she doesn’t re-use his note and she actually bought _one_ on her own and she uses his name instead of _Stranger_ or _Playboy_ or _Old Man_ or _Rockstar_ and plaster it against his door herself and though she’s done it like, a million times probably by then, it’s the first time really that she hesitates. That she’s actually stopped to ponder if she should rip the note off from existence and bury it somewhere he’ll never find.

But she lets it stay. Waits for his reply.

It comes two days later, looking weary and afraid, with a single question mark on it, standing in a cursive fashion that he always writes in.

_?_

She returns simply, _**Come home?**_

Three days later, he answers: _I’m sorry_.

He disappears for half a month after that.

When he returns, it’s not with a note.

“I think I want to give that coke another try,” he says when she opens the door, hair cut short and gloved metal fingers curling-uncurling under the pouring rain that’s pounding the whole damn town.

It takes her a moment, but she manages to slip on her jacket, nods back at him. “I know a great place.”

“James.” He says suddenly, when she’s working her way out of the door, and she gives him a look, startled, before he repeats it again, “James” and she realises that he’s (re?)introducing himself. Which was, she finds later, quite nice. “I guess you, uh, you could call me that.”

She blinks, then drops her shoulders. “Natasha.”

She thinks he’s smiling. “S’nice to finally meet you.”


End file.
